Elena Dorfman

Biography

Since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1988, Elena Dorfman has been specializing in documenting extreme circumstances and unusual subjects. In her series, “Still Lovers” she explores the relationship between hyper-realistic silicone sex dolls and their owners. In a recent interview, Elena Dorfman described the evolution of the series: “What began for me as a playful curiosity, how to photograph men having sex with 125 pounds of perfectly formed, synthetic female, rapidly turned into a serious exploration of the emotional ties that exist between men and women and their dolls. This exploration forced me to evaluate my own notions of love and what it means to value an object, a replacement human being, in effect, as real.”

The “Still Lovers” series has appeared in numerous international museum and gallery exhibitions and is the subject of two recent monographs, Still Lovers, (published by Channel Photographics, New York, 2005) and Des Poupees et des hommes, (published by La Musardine. Paris, 2005). The series is also prominently featured in the November 2005 issue of Aperture magazine.

Elena Dorfman’s body of work, “Fandomania,” premiered at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, in the Spring of 2007. This series portrays a growing subculture, which appears primarily at conventions staged throughout the US. Here, the mostly young adult audience, dress elaborately as characters from video games, Japanese Manga, and animated films. Explorations of identity through portraiture are at the forefront of Dorfman’s work, but blurred lines between fantasy and reality are a continuing theme. Elena Dorfman currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.

News

From first glance, Elena Dorfman and Jamie Diamond’s projects seem paradoxical. Dorfman spent five years in the 00s with families who have ‘relationships’ with sex dolls. The ensuing body of work sees huge-breasted silicone women – each is human-heavy and anatomically (read: genitally) realistic – in scenes of domesticity: watching television, playing Scrabble, sitting at the kitchen table. Their open-mouthed and innate sexuality is juxtaposed with quotidian routine. Diamond meanwhile spent six years engaging with a community of ‘reborners’, women who ‘adopt’ – and in many cases make – silicone baby dolls, which act as a surrogate baby for those who either can’t, or don’t want to, have their own flesh-and-blood babies. The polarity between rumpled silicone babies held innocently in the crooks of their mothers’ arms, and a shot of a hand up a sex doll’s tartan skirt is “intense”, guests at the show’s opening could be heard muttering.

Grace Banks’s debut book, Play With Me: Dolls, Women and Art, is set to release in October 2017 through Laurence King Publishing. The striking artworks featured—more than 60 in total—are at once jarring and familiar. Some recall the use of porcelain dolls in horror movies: objects of pristine innocence that, when placed in a dark context, are suddenly menacing.